2006-10-09-Early Days of Correcting Time
Marin #107
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Early Days of Correcting Time
o 1.2 Group: Marin TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teachers: Nebadonia & Monjoronson
o 2.2 TR: JL, Rick Voss
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
• 4 Note
Topic: Early Days of Correcting Time
Group: Marin TeaM
Facilitators
Teachers: Nebadonia & Monjoronson
TR: JL, Rick Voss
Session
Opening
Dear Mother Spirit and Michael, Welcome. Welcome to our one-hundredth session in this particular configuration, meaning we enjoyed several years of your messages through Donna D’Ingillo (of the Center for Christ Consciousness) before she left for Oakland. It may seem silly the way we attribute a kind of anniversary feeling to round numbers, but we do. It helps us remember all the wonderful times beyond counting when, after you signed off, there was a long, super-still moment we hated to disturb, then a lot of laughter and a few very sincere “Wow’s,” our faces wet with tears of joy for our having so directly experienced your love, our souls tickled to have found the two of you, above all things, so playful. So please accept, dear parents, our hearts full of gratitude. Amen.
NEBADONIA: My sons, this is your mother, Nebadonia, and all I can say is: We give up! We surrender! We accept your heartfelt gratitude and love–unconditionally. Just as we beam our own to you, unconditionally. Yes indeed, what fun this is. What joy and cheerful attitudes we can bring to meet all the serious challenges of a new day.
Lesson
These are your spiritual triumphs that warm our souls too. You give such an inestimable amount of value to our lives. Know that God and the whole celestial family meet their work without hesitation, with good cheer, thus suffusing all of reality with a kind of glow, a spiritual light everywhere as real as these physical photons you experience bouncing around. This joy of good cheer is the very essence of spirit, and when you can perceive it, and receive it, even during your darkest hours, your most intense pain–whether physical, or psychic, or spiritual, this is the reassurance of our presence. This is the sure knowledge that our Father shares our life with us. From his side, as well as from ours, there is no separation. We are able to perceive the totality of your personalities, and your souls. So thank you, my children, for your appreciation of this. Now I would like to pause to give another one of my sons the opportunity to transmit yet another of our celestial family.
MONJORONSON: Greetings, my friends, it is with great pleasure that I am among you tonight to celebrate your one-hundredth anniversary of bringing forth our love, our guidance, and our joy. Feel our joy in co-creating with you these wonderful moments that we share together. For it is deep within you that our love fills you. We will always remember these early days of what has become known as the Correcting Time.
These new relationships that we forge with you are special to us, just as they are to you, and we will continue to build upon them throughout eternity. So tonight I would just like to say: carry on. Enjoy yourselves with this wonderful gift from our Eternal Father, this sharing of our personalities, and the joy and the growth that comes from it. I will take my leave now and allow Mother Spirit to cradle you in her arms. Good evening.
NEBADONIA: My dear children, much has come up in the last few weeks’ sessions about the nature of this tool of language you must use, right within yourselves, to think, to express your experiences to yourselves as they become your memories. We have invited you to try, in stillness, to contact your souls, which are very distinct from your own memories. Your soul transcripts, being spiritual, bring with them such a fullness of your original experiences–the sights, the smells, the way reality felt at that particular age, whereas your memories are not usually quite so comprehensive and fulfilling.
Your memories rely upon how you think about what is happening, and what has happened, so permit me to go another step deeper into what may appear initially to be rather academic or abstract. Consider something as commonplace and useful as the concept of cold. On the surface of it, it seems absurd to suggest you have never experienced pure cold, yet you never have. You’ve always experienced some cold thing, whether it was the air you were in, or a tool you’ve picked up, or the clothes you put on first thing in the morning. So the word “cold” is an abstraction, a general designation derived from all these specific situations and experiences.
Deeper still, in your present situation every experience of yours is a mix of physical perceptions, mental meanings, and spiritual values. You very rarely, if at all, experience any of these pure and unadulterated by the others. True, your spirit is capable of direct perception of other spirit, but you only approach this possibility by relaxing as best you can–another learned ability–your physical and mental busyness and associations, and settle into an experience of stillness.
Michael has recently given two lessons on these considerations, one last week at this time, and one during a Lightline teleconference, respecting the nature of good and evil. There was a suggestion made that they are somewhat akin. The expressions used were: “two sides of the same coin,” and “beneath the surface of good and evil, there exists, of course, God’s more fundamental reality.” But they are nowhere so allied, not even as opposites, for they are of a totally different nature, origin, consequence and persistence.
Though you may not yet be able to experience this directly in its pure state, God is goodness. This is why He is sometimes referred to as the First Source of reality. He not only creates goodness, he is the thing itself. Like him, goodness is beyond time with no real beginning and no end, as it is with all his qualities. God is absolute love, infinite love, and is not, in and of himself, the creator of evil.
Evil does not have this same spiritual essence. Like the word “cold,” it is an abstraction, a generalization of specific acts that some spirit-endowed personal beings have committed, have done. It is a consequence of a deliberate intention, which means its use is reserved to self-conscious, personal beings. When your dog chews up your slippers, you say, “bad dog;” you don’t say, “evil dog.” No animal has the creative ability to construct for itself a reality so contrary to God’s essence and will.
It is because you are a spiritual being with an innate creativity that you co-create your own personal reality. This is generally thought of as a function of your ego, but your ego is just your perceptions and notions of yourself within this much larger self-generated, self-created world view. Your reality is not identical with God’s reality, neither in quality, nor, obviously, in quantity—the universe. Compared to most celestial personalities, your initial human life is but a flicker of time, an initial spark of a flame that can burn throughout eternity. This is what we mean by designating you an immature being. And we merely say you are imperfect by the same kind of comparison to perfect beings who actually do exist because they were created that way—for example, the Havona natives.
You are real. You have an experiential starting point, even though your personality is linked to a physical vehicle that has recapitulated the evolution of life on your planet before your time. It’s your spiritual creativity that gives you the ability to deviate from God’s will and ways. Your own co-created reality gives you an alternative, to general reality, upon which your ability to choose, your free will, is dependent. No sub-human animal is creative enough to be able to depart from its own Spirit-created/evolved nature. But you can. Your nature is different. And this is the origin of those deliberate intentions whose consequences inevitably harm another. This is the essence, the reality of evil.
Every intention and consequence by a personal being has a definite beginning, duration, and end. You’re all still experiencing the consequences of a rebellion by your System Sovereign and your Planetary Prince over two hundred thousand years ago, that greatly exaggerated and prolonged certain stages of general planetary development. For even before this rebellion, the planed-for, deliberately created separation of humanity into the different colored races brought about a kind of warfare that nearly annihilated some of these early races.
Primitive man has to compete with the whole animal kingdom for his food and life, so he must be ferocious indeed. Your Urantia book has informed you how primitive men and women so loved to fight, the early tribes often got involved in warfare through some merely imagined insult when the peace became too oppressive. This is why the true story of the evolution of your civilization and cultures is so necessary for you to understand, to truly appreciate how far you’ve come. And it is also nice to study the stages of general planetary evolution as the Urantia book delineates them, so you can have some ideas of what is possible, what comes next.
So think about these things, My children. Realize the nature of your own creativity. This co-creation you experience—your world, though mostly God’s laws and ways—physical, and mental, and spiritual–is not however the totality of his reality which you will not exhaust in all of eternity.
Consider the billion worlds of Havona and the time you will spend on every single one of these personalized, somewhat unique worlds before you achieve Paradise, then to turn about and look out upon six other Superuniverses to explore. But for now, it is, ironically, only by understanding the origin and nature of spiritual qualities and temporal consequences, like good and evil, that you get beyond superficial comparisons, and truly enervating, confusing duality of thought.
As Michael said last Thursday, you are now many thousands of years from the initiation of writing and preserved philosophies, and altogether too used to their abstractions. The way forward in your understanding is not “going back” to basics, but going on to them. For these more basic understandings penetrating the concepts the past has given you lie in your future, just as the past itself is a future territory for exploration. But enough for now. I’ll set my school teacher’s orientation aside and entertain whatever comments or questions you have for me.
Dialogue
Student: Mother, as I understand it, evil does not exist until somebody chooses to bring it into existence, but love always exists and has always existed because it’s a function of the Father. But I don’t understand the illustration about cold. I’ve never had any experience of cold? What is it, then, that I experience? It’s obviously a lack of heat, and I experience it and use the word symbol “cold.” But I don’t quite understand your illustration.
NEBADONIA: Yes, My son, I was trying to impress upon you the unconscious habituation you have to word symbols that only have meaning from what they can derive from your own personal experience, or what you may have heard about. Yes, you can define cold as a relative lack of heat, molecular motion, whatever. But you never experience a pure reality of “coldness.” That word symbol is an abstraction, a generalization of cold objects, physical objects, whether it’s the air, or a tool, or your clothes, as I mentioned.
I will agree, My son, it seems on a certain level absurd to say you’ve never experienced cold. But I want to point out that words only have meaning when they refer to specific experiences you’ve had, or know about. I can make up a word and say, “such and such,” but it has no meaning to you. What does it refer to? Getting on to basics, when you think of concepts like good and evil, ask yourself, to what do these refer? For much of human history people have thought the word evil referred to something real beyond what personal beings did, something co-equal with goodness in the cosmic sense. Does this help your understanding?
Student: It looks to me it comes down to my own experience as to what these words symbolize. It makes more sense than it did before. Thank you, Mother.
NEBADONIA: You’re welcome, my son. This is correct. This is why we remind you from time to time you are an experiential being. In your present human situation all your experience is a combination arising from this rather complex kind of being you are. So be in my love, and enjoy pondering on these things some more.
Student (laughing): Thanks, Mother—I will.
Student: Mother, I have a question. You presented such a wide-ranging discussion, I wondered about the Rebellion and its consequences in the present day—the Luciferian (sp?) culture. I guess you could say there was a party of Lucifer and his followers, and having all been adjudicated, all have been removed from the planet, by virtue of their free will to agree to go—if I understand right. In the current situation we face, where there are forces–as Monjoronson said in a transmission last week–who are conspiring against the trend of others for truth and beauty; can we say that the party of Lucifer does not exist as such? Are there still beings specifically in that party who are following Lucifer and his rebellion, or is it just individuals who are not even aware they are living in a culture which was once led by extra-human personalities?
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son—the latter; but about the adjudication of Lucifer and his followers who had not accepted the constant pro-offering of Michael’s mercy and rehabilitation; this annihilation was not by any means agreed to by their free-will choices. For thousands of years they had the choice to rejoin reality, get back in step with God’s progressing universe, by simply acknowledging his will and his ways: and many did. But for many of these beings, their personalities became so warped, so committed to their own view of things, they became—in your parlance—supreme ego-maniacs who chose to the very end of their existence to identify with their own so much tinier view of reality. They were so devoid of the humility which could have given them the perception and appreciation of this enormous universe they found themselves in. That was their choice, as it is with every personality. Do you cling to and identify with your own creation—your world-view, or do you accept that it is only your own creation, and fantastically minuscule by comparison to God’s? This turning about and seeking to know his will is what we call being open-minded.
After Pentecost all the rebel spirits were shorn of their powers, but even before this, as your Urantia book has informed you, when Caligastia and his rebel Midwayers had relatively full sway on the earth, even then they could only influence those normal-minded individuals who deliberately sought to ally themselves with evil. Now they are no more. The persistence of what you call the consequences of the Lucifer Rebellion is not being carried on by extra-human personalities. It persists solely in behavior–human behavior as it is perpetuated by your cultures.
But this perpetuation, my son, these traditions, these ways of handling situations, your expectations about what tomorrow brings with respect to your fellow humans, based upon your own experience so far; all this continuing behavior is what gives a large part of meaning to life: but not the only part. This is why you have our lessons that the God-created reality about you is not only continuing, but is also ever new, ever fresh. Roughly a whole half of God’s reality—this universe about you—is not repeating itself, making every moment in time unique. This is why we say that true progress of civilization and culture is more surely accomplished by evolution, rather than by revolution, which often throws out the baby with the bath water.
Rest assured, my son, the evil-intentioned personalities of the Lucifer Rebellion are no more. You can only look deep within yourselves, and ask yourselves what of your own behavior might be better utilized or changed to promote the good. We introduced the notion one time of absorbing and then grounding all the bad, unjust karma that comes your way, and not pass it on. It is only when you are all motivated and capable of doing this, that human society will be fantastically changed. So remember, all this continuing behavior and tradition does give meaning to life, and has to be transcended to greater meaning that actually incorporates it, that remembers all of the past, yet creatively introduces something new, something better. In doing so you will have taken one more step towards perfection, one more step toward being God-like. Does this answer your question, my son?
Student: It sure does. (laughing) Thank you…very much.
NEBADONIA: Then, my son, be in my love. (I shall)
Student: Mother Nebadonia, my sister—I guess—that’s what you said a few weeks ago: we should look upon you as our sister. I would like to talk about a film I saw last night called Days Of Glory, ironically called Days Of Glory since it was about war and the grim reality of war. In my mind, to mutilate another human being such as is done in battle, is evil. This is something I cannot bring myself to do, although there have been situations where this has become necessary to protect a society or country, or a culture. But today in our modern world there are many who go off to fight, and they bring harm to another human being in the name of war. But I’m confused. Is this evil? Are these men and women evil who do this, who fight battles for our country? Can you help me understand this better?
NEBADONIA: Yes, my son, the most succinctly this answer has been put, which I am certain you are familiar with, is that God looks at the individual–the personality, and the act, as two distinct things. For your own part, simply getting through the day, we recommend you separate in your mind the difference between judgement and assessment, which is largely, perhaps strangely-seeming, a matter not of quality but of quantity. An example is, during a conversation you have the conviction someone is not telling you the truth. This is a necessary assessment for you to make, yet if you expand it to include the entire person before you, his or her essence/personality, you could say this is being judgmental, and a bit of arrogant hubris since you cannot know this other personality as we or our Father can.
And so it is with each individual who gets caught up in warfare. This is just no way, my son, to generalize from one to another. Since the very beginning of the human race, ever after man was able to meet and conquer the ferocious beasts around him with some degree of success, he became his own greatest danger, the origin of his own greatest fears. For man is capable of, and does do things no animal can conceive of. But there is such a real thing as defensive warfare.
There is such a thing as righteously defending yourself from aggression and violence. Yet obviously when this involves something more than what is immediately in your face, when you think about this in terms of larger societies with their crime and police forces, then contending nations with their armies, you can see how complex this assessment becomes, and how only God himself can judge an individual’s specific act in any final, spiritual way.
When you think of active warfare, the actual confrontation is so strange compared to other human interactions, and generally so unique, and startling, and terrifying to those engaged; so full of ferocity and yet too the most tender and courageous moments of self-sacrifice and love and support among the combatants; so humanly absolute, in these moments, between “us” and “them”—my friends beside me, and the enemy we face–not only what he can do to us, but what we need to do to him: I think it is best, my son, if you keep your wonder open and not try to generalize this situation. Within combat a single individual can go in moments from one extreme of love, or ferocity, to the other. So now you have to tell me if this helps answer your question.
Student: Yes, it does, it answers it quite well. Often times I just become overwhelmed with the cruelty this world has had to go through. But I do understand what you’re saying. Thank you for that explanation.
NEBADONIA: If you keep this essence of warfare alive in your mind you will not nonchalantly rationalize what this essence provokes so much among the combatants. You can keep your mind all the more focused, all the more clearly concentrated on the complex question: how to put an end to it. For this includes the individual motivations and choices which lead to war across all the different levels of society, and are by no means limited to the combatants. This is the only way to keep your focus on how to prevent war.
We must admit, for you human beings with such enormously divergent ideas, and notions, and concepts about the past–in your different cultures and their historical origins, there is coming about on Urantia today a meeting of these cultures such as makes this moment unique, for all your history gives you no sure guidelines. The whole world is involved as never before in a gigantic experiment to find out what works, what leads to the greatest peace. No single human, apart from Michael, as Jesus, has had that answer. There is much you have to be humble about, and so we encourage you to see the positive aspect of humility, the enormity out there you have to keep leaning into, stretching yourself and letting go your surety, to embrace.
Keep feeling, my son. Even the existence of movies with their new-found realism is a matter for hope. It was not so long ago you had a Civil War and two World Wars where whole societies got all excited and fired up and couldn’t wait to go and show those others out there—you know—how soon it was all going to be over; and “we,” of course, would triumph. Is there anything else you wish to discuss about this?
Student: No, Mother. I would ask for your embrace, your love, your purity, that I may continue to find hope, and be a part of bringing hope to this world.
Closing
NEBADONIA: Then let it be so. I wrap you in my love, and I feed your hope. There is true progress here on Urantia. You’ve come such a enormous way that the appreciation of this can also feed your hope. As Michael says, we can see this hope and faith burning in every human soul. It is a matter of maturing through hard-earned experience even more than it is well-meant intention. There are few individuals totally associated and identified with evil. It is mostly the unthinking habituation to certain kinds of behavior, certain feelings of what you must do, that have to be examined afresh.
This can most effectively be done deep in stillness, deep in prayer, opening yourself to your own creative abilities to take in all the past and yet come up with something new, something that includes everyone. As you do this, my son, you feed your hope, you re-connect with spirit. This is where you, and I, and Michael most profoundly share company. Michael sends you his peace to restore you, to give you a genuine experience of what it is you are working toward. And my love serves to connect you, especially in understanding and reaching out to those you call: the enemy.
Good evening.
Note
[Transcriber’s Notes on change of capitalization policy:] Dear Folks, I decided to try some of Mother Spirit’s suggestions on re-examining habits and methods, and then accepting too her “need to experiment;” so here goes: normal capitalization. I think it works. What I capitalized before–all references to extra-human personalities–can be inferred from context. I kind-of miss Michael and Mother Spirit specifically including us with themselves, sometimes–“we” as contrasted to “We”– but perhaps this too can be detected by our own spirits. Enjoy. Jerry.
